English Translation

- 32 - this last mentioned possibility, despite favourable conditions, hardly wanted to make use of. The acting head of the Land Office has placed a decisive emphasis on the provision of a sufficient number of replacement dwellings or, if not otherwise possible, of emergency dwellings, which should be allocated by the relocation firms to the resettlement workers if they could not have been able to obtain new accommodation or livelihoods from their own resources until the time of evacuation. For this reason, the Ministry of the Interior was urged in several meetings to seize a sufficient number of suitable living rooms and stables for the needs of the emigrants and to keep them available for the time of eviction. In addition, the purchase department has made a significant contribution to the clearance process by setting up advance payments on the purchase price of near-place financial institutions and by ensuring that the purchase amounts themselves are paid out quickly. Finally, the establishment of the Department of Eviction alone gave considerable psychological support to the smooth course of the overall procedure, insofar as this gave the emigrants, in individual cases, the opportunity to contact the commissioner's head of the Land Office as a last resort, after all requests had previously been made to the usually competent protectorate authorities without result. In exceptional and justified individual cases, direct intervention by the Räumung Division has allowed several lengthy and difficult processes of a clear * 33